James Henry Lane (senator)

James Henry Lane (22 June 1814-11 July 1866) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-IN 4) from 4 March 1853 to 3 March 1855, succeeding Samuel W. Parker and preceding William Cumback, and a US Senator from Kansas (R) from 4 April 1861 to 11 July 1866, preceding Edmund G. Ross.

Biography
James Henry Lane was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana in 1814, the son of congressman Amos Lane. He became a lawyer in 1840 and served in the Mexican-American War, and he served in the US House of Representatives from 1853 to 1855. Lane voted in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and, in 1855, he relocated to the Kansas Territory. He became the leader of the Jayhawkers' abolitionist "Free State Army" during Bleeding Kansas, and he helped draft the anti-slavery Topeka Constitution. In 1861, he was elected as one of the state's inaugural US Senators, and, while still a sitting Senator, he became a Brigadier-General in the US Army during the American Civil War. He led a brigade in Missouri, but his outrageous 23 September 1861 sacking of Osceola, in which the town was razed and nine citizens executed, led to Lane's Brigade being ended. From 1862 to 1863, he served as recruiting commissioner of Kansas, and he created a black volunteer infantry regiment in October 1862, fighting a year before the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. On 21 August 1863, he was targeted by Confederate guerrillas in the Lawrence Massacre, but he escaped through a ravine. After the war, he was accused of betraying his fellow Radical Republicans and of financial irregularities, and, deranged and depressed, Lane shot himself in the head as he jumped from his carriage in Leavenworth, Kansas. He died ten days later.